Finance committee  Canadians have increased their leverage substantially in recent years. The debt-to-GDP ratio gets a lot of attention, but it's actually not a very good metric of risk because you're measuring the total stock of debt to the total annual flow of income. It's better to look at debt

Finance committee  There's a vulnerability of high household debt if the economy suffers a severe shock, such as, for example, if we had an unemployment shock or if the Bank of Canada fell behind the inflation curve and had to really push up interest rates. We have a vulnerability now that the high

Finance committee  The Conference Board hasn't done an analysis on it.

Finance committee  When the Canadian economy is weak, when you are in a recession, fiscal policy can be very effective in helping mitigate the degree of impact of the business cycle. The Canadian economy in 2014 suffered a very severe commodity shock. Parts of the country were driven into recessi

Finance committee  Obviously, from a business planning point of view, businesses like to have a good idea of what the tax system is going to look like so they can build their plans and make their decisions. When tax changes are considered, their full implications need to be considered, and also the

Finance committee  Sure. On the procurement side, very quickly, if we think about the government as a consumer of goods and services, it's an enormous potential client base. Obviously, the government needs to purchase the right goods from the firms that can provide the products and services that it

Finance committee  The federal government fiscal situation is in good shape, but when you look at federal plus provincial finances, you can see that the country as a whole is running larger government deficits. I think the federal government can run deficits for a few years. I don't really care whe

Finance committee  The recommendations that I just noted are in my submission today, but I'd also be happy to provide more.

Finance committee  Sure. At the moment, about 70% of our Canadian population growth is coming from immigration. The economy grows because either you have more workers or you use your workers more productively. When we think about the trend slowing in the Canadian economy, we realize that if we hol

Finance committee  Thank you very much, and thank you to the committee for the opportunity to appear and discuss how the government can help boost productivity. This is a critical priority. Since the end of the Second World War, roughly 80% of the rise in the standard of living of Canadians has co

Finance committee  I strongly believe that a road map as to how the federal government is going to balance the books would be helpful from a business confidence point of view. I think there are concerns on the part of businesses when governments are running deficits. They aren't concerned about the

Finance committee  When we look at the labour market, we see an interesting dynamic. We have businesses that say they're not really willing to invest in the current market, and about half of them are saying they're not willing to invest because demand is weak. You can certainly understand that from

Finance committee  I think Canada has very competitive business tax rates. I think there are other barriers, though, to investment and growth. The regulatory environment is a good example. I'm going to give a provincial example. One of the things I was a little surprised by was to find that Ontar

Finance committee  And you want it very succinctly.

Finance committee  The outlook for the Canadian economy is one of very weak economic growth at a time where there is slack in the economy. I think you can make a case that when private sector demand is weak, some targeted fiscal stimulus can have a beneficial impact. At the same time, you have to b